Adam and Eve were created in a paradisaical state. Yet, God introduced the idea of death to them, even though they likely had no conception of what that meant. How could they? Nothing had ever died before! Still, God warned them not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or they would die.
We do not know what the tree of knowledge of good and evil was, nor what sort of fruit it bore. What we do know is that by eating it, Adam and Eve would die. The only thing we can assume is whenever they partook of this forbidden fruit, some sort of change came over their bodies that made dying possible. We don’t know what that change was; we may never know. But something happened, and as a result of their disobedience, they became subject to death and were ushered out of their paradisaical glory.
Whatever changes took place in Adam and Eve’s bodies must also have taken place in the bodies of all the animals, for they became wild and ferocious, or at least wild. So, we know the change wasn’t necessarily in the fruit itself because the animals didn’t eat the fruit, but yet they, too, were subject to death.
The fall affected the earth as well, for we know it was cursed for Adam’s sake (see Genesis 3:17). So, because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, the entire world, and everything on it, fell from the glorified state it was in at the time. Fell into what? Into mortality. Into death and dying. Into working by the sweat of one’s brow. Into painful birthing. Into trials and afflictions. In short, into life as we know it.
Mankind would have remained in its fallen state forever had not Jesus Christ come to bring us back to that original state of innocence through his atonement for our sins. Even though mankind’s innocence was lost in the fall, Christ brought it back again, or at least gave us the opportunity to attain it again. Remember what Jesus said?
“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4)
And what are some of the greatest characteristics of little children? Their innocence. Their willingness to obey. Their unconditional love. Through Christ we can once again obtain this state of innocence through humility and faith in him.
Yet, this is not all. In our new state of innocence we are brought back into the presence of God, although this is not as easy as it is often made out to be.
Because God wants us to return to him, he has offered us help, even as a father (Father) to a son or a daughter.
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” (Hebrews 12:5-7).
The following are Greek renderings of the four key words in these verses, followed in parentheses by dictionary definitions where needed. The Greek comes from James Strong’s Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, from The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press, 1973. The dictionary used is Webster’s NewWorld Dictionary, Simon and Schuster, 1982.
- exhortation: imploration (beseeching, earnestly asking for something); hortation (encouraging or urging to good deeds); and solace (comfort, relief).
- chastening: to train up a child; to educate; to discipline by punishment.
- rebuked: to confute (to prove a person to be in error); to admonish (to caution against specific faults; to warn; to reprove mildly; to exhort; to inform or remind by way of a warning).
- scourgeth: flog (to beat with a stick, to whip).
You might wonder why I’ve gone to all the trouble of pointing out these things. I did it in order to show you the depth of feelings God has for each of us.
Remember when I said we are like God? Do we not, as well as God, encourage our children to do good deeds, to earnestly ask them to mind or behave properly, comfort them, to warn them, to mildly reprove them, and so forth? Do we not train up a child by educating them in the ways of rightness?
Like God, a good parent gives their children choices. We attach appropriate consequences to those choices. And then we enforce those consequences when the choices are made, no matter how hard it may be to do so. God does the same. And we may or may not like the results, depending on what we have chosen to act upon.
Punishment may seem mean or cruel, especially in today’s prevailing practice of no pain at any cost. We’re not talking about mean-spirited punishment, born of anger or frustration. We’re talking about God’s punishment where he enforces the consequences of the choices we make. In a sense, man punishes himself when he makes poor choices.
God treats us as sons and daughters if we endure chastening, or discipline. Remember, too, discipline comes from the same root word as disciple. A disciple is a follower of a teacher or school of thought (Webster’s, ibid.). In this case, the teacher is Jesus Christ and the school of thought is the Gospel.
Of course, God doesn’t literally flog us. Hopefully, we don’t flog our children, either. However, sometimes God does use our enemies to flog us—physically, emotionally or emotionally—in order to wake us up to his Godship and our sonship and daughtership. The Old Testament is full of examples where God used the enemies of the Israelites to attack and even conquer them when they had wandered away from the one true God to other gods.
What we have learned from all of this is that if God receives us, he chastens, disciplines and trains us in the ways of righteousness . . . as though we were his literal children, which, strangely enough, we are! The Old Testament version of this is known as refining and trials.
“But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).
Is that not a refining process—through trials? Job certainly had a multitude of trials come upon him that would shake most of us to our very cores.
God tries us so we come out refined as gold. It is trials, not freedom from trials that refine us. That goes as much for the end times as it did in the New and Old Testament times. Is not God the same yesterday, today and forever? If he tries his sons and daughters in one age, will he not try them in another?
The Rapture, so called, supposedly frees us from those trials relative to the end of times. Is that really God’s way to purify us?
“Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10).
It is affliction, not freedom from affliction that purifies us.
“And I will bring the third part [the other two died] through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God” (Zechariah 13:9).
Trials, not freedom from trials. Refining, not freedom from refining. Afflictions, not freedom from afflictions. These are God’s way of purifying us, not whisking us away from all these growth experiences. At least, that’s the way I see it.
If we are God’s, he is going to try us and refine us, that we may come out of the furnace of affliction as silver and gold. That’s why I do not believe God’s people will escape the furnace of affliction in the last days, regardless of the popular notion that they will. If they escape these trials and afflictions, they will not come away purified and refined as silver and gold.
Like Ripley, I say, Believe It Or Not. I condemn no one for his or her beliefs. However, I do try and apply some amount of reasoning to mine. You are free to agree or disagree.
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